Black Lightning is the Black Lives Matter of TV shows, arriving on TV at a timely moment

Vulture

“Black Lightning is slick, smart, and infused with a social conscience that feels especially spot-on in light of the heightened debate in America about what constitutes racism and how to properly protest racially motivated police brutality,” says Jen Chaney. “It’s the Black Lives Matter of superhero shows. It’s a funky ’70s crime series. Or maybe it’s what happens when comic-book TV gets infused with a tiny bit of the spirit of The Wire.”

ALSO:

• Black Lightning arrives having found a way to make the typical superhero origin story fresh: by bypassing it altogether
• Black Lightning just might be the first woke network TV show with a superhero that takes on stereotypes and prejudice
• It feels like a vindication of 1970s black empowerment, as much as a worthwhile hour of pulse-quickening entertainment
• This is a black show on a network filled with white superheroes, and it displays no insecurity or self-consciousness about that
• Black Lightning operates in the real world of race, police violence and crime — without beating you over the head with a message in every scene
• The weakest part of the show is the actual superheroism
• Showrunner Salim Akil recalls how a chilling racial profile scene was inspired by his experiences with being pulled over
• Black Lightning offers yet another terrible CW superhero disguise
• To prepare to play TV’s first black lesbian superhero, Nafessa Williams studied Pam Grier films
• Cress Williams on the importance of Black Lightning: “I was so emotional, because to see it really happening…. I mean, it’s historical in every sense of the word”
• Salim Akil: “I wanted to add something not only to black culture but to American culture that can’t be taken away”